Dinner is a dramatic, theatrical experience at Kiku Japanese Steakhouse & Sushi Bar, a sleek, modern Middletown eatery where the stove is center stage and the chef's lively choreography blends fire and sharp, culinary skills.

At H-Yan Hot Pot & BBQ, a new Cantonese restaurant in Newark, the spotlight also is on a meal. But the diner is the chef who is putting on a one-man show.

Restaurants featuring interactive dining experiences raise the bar when it comes to a memorable night on the town. Diners aren't always asked to join in the cooking process, but that's often the best part of a meal.

Participating in a customized, made-to-order meal is certainly not a new phenomenon.

The Melting Pot, the Brandywine Hundred restaurant that celebrates the kitschy, 1960s style of Swiss eating where diners dip morsels of food into broth, oil, cheese or chocolate, has had a home in the Independence Mall shopping center off Concord Pike (U.S. 202) since 1994.

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Expect to take home some of your food at Kiku Japanese Steakhouse in Middletown. The portion sizes, especially the rice or noodles, are huge.(Photo: Patricia Talorico/The News Journal)

And Casablanca, the Moroccan eatery at 4010 N. Dupont Highway near New Castle where belly dancers perform during a multi-course meal (and diners sometimes join them), got a reboot about a year ago.

The renovated restaurant began welcoming customers again in January 2017 after having been closed for more than four years due to fire damage.

The Japanese style of cuisine known as teppanyaki has been a staple of U.S. dining out since the early 1960s when the first Benihana restaurant opened in New York.

The popularity of the steakhouses is usually due to convivial nature of the meal and the showmanship of the chefs. Customers sit around a griddle, known as a teppan, and watch as a chef prepares the meal – usually steak, chicken or seafood and a variety of vegetables along with either rice or noodles.

The best chefs joke, juggle spatulas and try to flick shrimp into diners' gaping mouths, which can look scarily similar to feeding sea lions or seals at SeaWorld.

The market for Japanese steakhouses in Delaware took a hit with the recent closings of two Hibachi restaurants.

Hibachi Japanese Steak House & Sushi Bar at 5607 Concord Pike in Brandywine Hundred, a part of the Market Square Shopping Center since 1993, shut its doors in 2015.

But, a newcomer to the scene is the Kiku Japanese Steakhouse & Sushi Bar in the Westown Town Centre off U.S. 301.

Dinner and a show is usually a good date night out, but at Kiku, which opened last summer, dinner is the show.

Scoring a seat at one of the six iron teppan griddles at Kiku can be a challenge. Make a reservation at the 417 S Ridge Ave. restaurant to ensure you get a seat.

My group visited on a recent, very busy Wednesday evening, without a reservation, and there was a 45-minute wait for a seat in front of a chef.

The smell of the grilling food heightens the senses and so do the changing colors in the dining rooms, bar area and sushi bar. They glow with theatrical pink, lavender, neon green, aqua blue and red lighting throughout the evening.

Kiku is the Japanese word for "chrysanthemum" and flower decorations dot the walls and upside umbrellas hang from the ceiling.

Pyrotechnics are often part of the show at teppanyaki restaurants and, if you’re lucky, the chef will make a flaming volcano out of a stack of onion rings. The chef also offers squirts of saké for adults and "baby saké" (it's lemonade) for kids.

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Changing theatrical lighting is a feature at the new Kiku Japanese Steakhouse in Middletown. Kiku is the Japanese word for chrysanthemum.(Photo: Patricia Talorico/The News Journal)

The food is fine, and there's a lot of it. A hibachi meal, ranging from $15 for chicken to $30 for twin lobster tails, comes with miso soup or salad, two shrimp appetizers, vegetables, and a giant mound of fried rice or udon or soba noodles.

It's almost too much for one person. Most people seem to walk out with take-home boxes.

Some Japanese steakhouse restaurants provide a variety of sauces in which to dip the food. When we got hibachi dinners at Kiku at a regular restaurant table, rather than at the grill, the meal, prepared in the kitchen, had the sauce already mixed into our beef and seafood selections.

Next time, I'd ask for the sauce on the side.

The experience at Kiku is the whole point of the meal and the fun is watching and being entertained by the chef.

Is this novelty for everyone? No, but the 9-year-old boy with me, who loved the flying food and rising flames, thought it was the greatest restaurant he had ever visited. He requested a return visit for his birthday.

For an even more interactive experience, consider H-Yan Hot Pot & BBQ, a new restaurant at 230 E. Main St. in the Newark Shopping Center. (Korean barbecue is not yet available at the restaurant, which also does not sell alcohol.)

Hot pot is an east Asian specialty where diners take part in preparing the food. The gist of this communal-style eating tradition is guests gather around a deeply-flavored, boiling cauldron of broth and dunk in a variety of thinly sliced meat or seafood and vegetables.

Don't like the food? Sorry, since you're the chef, there's no one to blame but yourself.

Other cultures have similar dishes. Shabu-shabu is the Japanese version of hot pot, and in Cambodia it's called Yao Hon.

My group of six, novice hot pot-ers, visited H-Yan Hot Pot in Newark on a recent Saturday. Tables filled throughout the night with a crowd that featured a mix of families, couples, Asian college students from the nearby University of Delaware, and young hipsters. Most everyone seemed to know the hot pot drill.

Our server didn't give us much direction in what to do or how to order. Since we're not timid eaters, we mostly watched others (and did some googling) to figure things out.

Still, unless you know what you're doing, the hot pot experience can feel a little intimidating at first and might be best suited for the adventurous.

While some smaller groups shared pots, each diner in our group received their own, individual hot pot.

The small pots are brought to the table with piping hot broth. The pots are then situated on top of an electric burner in front of each diner that can be changed to low, medium or high settings. Servers carry kettles and give broth refills, as needed, though no one ever asked what kind of broth we previously ordered before pouring in the liquid.

A condiment bar in the back of the restaurant has a large selection of toppings like fermented bean curd, chili oil, cilantro and scallions along with a variety of sauces such as peanut, sesame and seafood. You can bring as many as you like to the table.

To get started, a server will bring menus and a sheet, similar to those handed out at sushi restaurants, where you make your hot pot selections.

First, you chose the broth you want to cook your food in. Tender palates might like the House Original Broth or Chinese Herb Style broth, chicken flavored broths swimming with corn cobs and chunks of tomato.

If you want more fire, get the spicy Szechuan base.

From there, you chose from dozens of ingredients, which arrive on plates in bite-size pieces. The plates can be shared and many are straightforward like napa cabbage, enoki mushrooms, spinach and pork dumplings with chives.

You can get noodles such udon or shanghai. Pork balls, somewhat similar to meatballs, were some of our favorite selections. There's also a variety of thinly sliced beef, fish fillets and whole shrimp.

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At H-Yan Hot Pot & BBQ in Newark, you can chose a variety of condiments to go with the meal.(Photo: Patricia Talorico/The News Journal)

For the bold and brave, there also are Chinese favorites like boneless duck feet, beef tendon, beef tongue, pig brain and kidneys and pork blood.

Food is dropped or swished in the hot broth and the true test of hot pot is knowing when to fish things out with the provided slotted spoon or pair of chopsticks. Meat, cut thin, only needs only a few seconds. Shrimp is ready when it turns pink. Thicker vegetables like potatoes or taro root will take longer.

Beef or seafood can be dipped into the condiments– you'll get a separate plate to dab them on – or you can also spoon the broth and ingredients into a separate bowl. Spoons and bowls weren't brought to the table, but they can be found in stacks at the condiment bar.

Hot pot certainly isn't fast food. But, once you get the hang of the cooking, it's a meal meant to be savored and enjoyed, which is perfect for conversation and digestion.

Contact Patricia Talorico at (302) 324-2861 or ptalorico@delawareonline.com and on Twitter @pattytalorico